at-large "membership" and indivdual domain name holders constituency

There is an obvious overlap between the at-large "membership" and
the proposed Individual Domain Name Holders Constituency. The claim
has been that IDNHC members would have a defined special interest,
different from the at-large. However, I don't think that
distinction holds, under closer examination.
First of all, it is clear that *all* the members of the IDNHC would be
eligible for membership in the at-large, and indeed, we can expect
that most of them will be.
Second, in fact registration of a domain name is not a significant
qualification for membership -- anyone can have a domain by spending
a few minutes at a web site and paying $35/year (probably
significantly less). That is, the IDNHC can be thought of as a
membership organization with a $35/year membership fee, with a
relatively trivial membership ritual you have to go through. Any
member of the at-large can be a member of the IDNHC.
Thus, those members of the at-large interested in incrementally
increasing their representation can also participate in the IDNHC;
while the IDNHC will almost certainly be a large subset of the
at-large.
Whether this overlap is a good or bad thing can be debated, but
there is little doubt that it would exist.
--
Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com lonesome." -- Mark Twain